New Life for Funeral Cards

Funeral cards include a wide variety of images from the classic to the contemporary, such as images of the Holy Family, the Blessed Virgin, and favorite prayers.1

My grandmother Margaret Simonik Kozlina (1913-1988) was a lovely person who acquired many friends throughout her life. As a lunch counter worker at Woolworth’s in Five Points (Collinwood neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio), Grandma shared pleasantries over grilled cheese and cups of coffee. I imagine she got to know her customers pretty well; maybe she even knew their favorite orders. After she retired Grandma became a regular at the Collinwood Community Center. And as a devoted Catholic all her life, she was active at St. Jerome Catholic Church as well. Her friendship circles were wide and no doubt overlapped.

My Grandma, Margaret Simonik Kozlina, whose funeral card collection I inherited.

 

So, it’s no wonder then, that as Grandma grew older and her friends began to pass away, she attended their funerals and collected the cards which were often given out at that time. I recently came across a few dozen cards that she saved. After wondering what to do with them, I hit upon the idea to scan them and upload them to the person’s Find a Grave memorial. 

Find a Grave is a genealogist's go-to place to look for burial information for family, friends and famous people. Made up of volunteer-contributed memorial pages, Find a Grave offers details about cemeteries and individual memorials to those buried in them. The pages often include birth, death, and burial information and may include pictures, biographies, family information, and more. Visitors can leave remembrances via 'virtual flowers' on the memorials and even suggest edits or additional info.

As I searched through Find a Grave’s database for this project, I found most of Grandma's friends already had memorials; some were more complete than others. In cases when there was no memorial for the person, I created a new one. Funeral cards usually name the cemetery where the deceased was buried, as well as the specific gravesite information, helpful when creating a Find a Grave memorial. I also added details such as their birth dates, death dates, middle initials, and even some maiden names, to each memorial page.

Most of the Find a Grave memorials for the individuals named on the cards lacked a headstone photo, so as part of my process, I requested those. Several of these requests have been fulfilled since then. I uploaded the funeral card images: the card front usually includes religious quotes or imagery; and the card back usually includes the deceased’s name, date of death, cemetery name, and burial information at a minimum, as well as a prayer and the name of the funeral home which handled their arrangements. I added this caption to each image: “Funeral card (front/back) kept by my grandmother Margaret Kozlina.” Families who visit their love one's Find a Grave page will then know who posted the photos and why.

Carmella H. Fuhrman’s funeral card includes not only her death date, but the date of her funeral, her maiden name (Nucci), and her specific grave location at Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery.

I hope that it’s comforting to their families that Grandma kept her friends’ funeral cards. I also hope that uploading these funeral cards to Find a Grave might prove helpful to future family historians, perhaps offering a clue which opens a door of discovery into their family.

I felt closer to my Grandma by getting to know her friends through their cards. As I added a flower to each friend’s memorial, I hoped Grandma would appreciate that they were still being remembered.

If you have inherited a funeral card collection—or have your own—why not add them to Find a Grave, and bring to mind your relatives and their circle of friends and family?

Until next time...

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Visit my Grandma's Find a Grave memorial here. 

A version of this post was published in the Greater Cleveland Genealogical Society's The Certified Copy (Issue 52.2), Summer 2023. 

This post was chosen as a Friday's Family History Find by blogger Linda Stufflebean. Thanks Linda!

 

NOTES

¹ Funeral card collection of Margaret Simonik Kozlina; privately held by Nancy Gilbride Casey [address for private use,] Tioga, Texas, 2023. Various cards dated from 1975-1985. Inherited by author from her mother Anna Margaret Kozlina Gilbride (1937-2010), who inherited them her mother Margaret Simonik Kozlina (1913-1988).